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Rantz: Desperate Cary Moon trying to hide who she is

Cary Moon wants Progressive Seattle voters to believe she’s an activist just like them, not beholden to corporations or the wealthy, but, in truth, she’s just a rich white person with paternalistic views of Seattlites.

Competing with over a dozen candidates for mayor, Moon is turning to gimmicks to get positive media attention. It isn’t really working.

This week, after mayoral candidate Jenny Durkan earned an endorsement by the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, Moon released a statement proudly proclaiming she was not endorsed by the Chamber because, she says, their values are different from her own. She even levels against the Chamber the absurd implication that the Chamber supports sexual harassment.

This was a stunt.

Moon desperately sought the endorsement of the Chamber because it would allow her to claim support of grassroots supporters and the business community, an ideal combo if you’re running the City of Seattle. She’s only now proudly proclaiming a lack of support because she didn’t get it. Oh, how punk rock of her.

Another stunt? She realizes she’s in desperate need of grassroots support, otherwise it’s pretty difficult competing against candidates, like Nikkita Oliver, who actually have it. Moon announced over email she will “personally match all grassroots contributions to my campaign, dollar for dollar, in May and June.” It’s worth noting that the email came on June 1, so I’m not sure why she includes May in the email if the email is intended to get you to donate.

Why is she matching donations? Moon is offering this up to show you how she can’t be bought and paid for by the wealthy or corporations. But what she’s really doing is showing us how privileged and wealthy she is. That’s not so punk rock.

Most candidates can’t match donations like this. Like Donald Trump, Moon has a large amount of personal wealth to finance her campaign, so she wouldn’t need to rely on corporations to fund her. In fact, in her filing paperwork, she indicates a net worth of $4.1 million dollars. Kudos to her for amassing that wealth. She may be trying to keep this hush-hush; she didn’t respond to our request to find out how high she’s willing to go on matches.

But this also begs the question: because she’s such a champion for the little guy (of which she is not), not the wealthy (of which she is), how is she doing so far on campaign contributions? Pretty well if you judge her by out-of-Seattle contributors who can afford to donate up to the contribution limit.

Of Moon’s top 20 contributors, half of them are from people outside of Seattle (or out of the state completely), 13 of which contributed the max of $500 per individual. Now, that’s not necessarily abnormal since it’s early in the campaign and I imagine some family and friends are donating to the campaign.

But Moon has tried hard to brand herself as a friend of the working class; so why aren’t they donating to her? Oliver has a dizzying amount of small contributors. Former Mayor Mike McGinn is showing a strong showing as well.

Now, perhaps I’m too bias to properly analyze her campaign. It certainly doesn’t help that she is constitutionally illiterate when it comes to the First Amendment, and that issue determines whether or not I’d even consider voting for a candidate. But it’s pretty difficult to look at the data, her own words, and silly stunts and not see her as a candidate getting increasingly desperate for attention.